Do more players change the odds on UTH?

I have been playing Ultimate Texas Hold 'em for a while now and have been practicing on Wizard of Odds site at home. Of course the web site is a one on one deal so I was wondering if more players at the table change the odds of your play?

The thing that I have started to notice as I have been playing is that (just like many games) most people have no idea what they are doing! They ask me and other people what they should do with their cards.

Whats funnier is when they ask someone else (that also has no idea how to play the game) what to do! LOL!!!

I am admitting that I am no expert but at least I have studied the game and understand it fairly well.

So this question has come to mind and I would like to see what you think.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts!

The only way that having more players can change your odds is if you can see their cards and then use them to help make your decisions.

There is an interesting psychological effect of full and busy tables -
You see more 'winners' by virtue of there being more people, so full tables are overly perceived as lucky or "hot tables."
In reality, your odds are the same, - aside from holecarding other's cards to glean knowledge.

Quote: Paigowdan

There is an interesting psychological effect of full and busy tables -
You see more 'winners' by virtue of there being more people, so full tables are overly perceived as lucky or "hot tables."
In reality, your odds are the same, - aside from holecarding other's cards to glean knowledge.

At the casino I play at, they don't even say anything about hole carding other's cards. My guess is because the advantage of seeing another card or even couple of cards doesn't changes the edge all that much.

No, the number of players has no effect on the house edge. Nor does it affect the chances for getting any particular hands. Another poster asked the same question with the following logic (paraphrasing), "I get more Trips bet wins when I'm alone than on a full table." This is actually correct if you're looking at wins per hour since you'll get roughly twice the hands per hour on a heads-up game and therefore twice the Trips bet wins per hour. You'll also have twice the losses per hour; the house edge doesn't change.

Quote: Triplell

At the casino I play at, they don't even say anything about hole carding other's cards. My guess is because the advantage of seeing another card or even couple of cards doesn't changes the edge all that much.

There's definitely much stronger player collusion games but UTH isn't bad. Check out Discount Gambling and particularly this article for an analysis. He sim'd it to 1.6% house edge versus the usual 2.3% or so. Not a bad gain.

I played this game at Ameristar East Chicago recently. The guy next to me had a copy of the strategy (discountgambling.net). This is the ONLY time I've ever seen anybody playing the correct strategy. I mentioned this to him. He knew the Wizard's sites.

Yeah, I thought as much. (That number of players on the table do not effect the play).

I know that depending on the pit boss's that are there that we can talk (show) about our hands. Some boss's don't care others are real ass's!

This leads to another question (maybe a different thread).

"Do you think that if they change out the cards in the shufflemaster that it effects the odds? "

I went to play last night and it was a pretty good table. I was up a bit (about $200) then they changed the cards and it seemed like night and day! (Maybe I was imagining it) The table became almost unbeatable. When I finally said "enough" I was down $100!

Changing the cards has no effect on the edge either. The cards are usually changed fairly frequently compared to a shoe dealt blackjack game because the players are allowed to handle the cards.

Quote: khoyle2001

"Do you think that if they change out the cards in the shufflemaster that it effects the odds? "

That's completely psychological, and up until last month, I kind of felt the same way. However, I played on a Shufflemaster table that knew all the cards (since it was an iTable) and hit a Royal Flush and was constantly beating the dealer, so variance must have just hated me for about a year. ;)

I will say I'm not wild about the new machines creeping up in PA and NV that deal Pai Gow Poker, where it generates the number and sets hands for the house all on a screen. I've played a bunch on those, and when the RNG is determining where the cards go, it FEELS like the dealer gets all the good hands. I know this isn't true, but if I don't like how it's dealt, then my option is to find another table.

HOWEVER, CASINOS (or more importantly, the bigwigs in charge of the tables) ARE ALSO SUPERSTITIOUS!!!! I was playing at Rhythm City in Davenport, IA about 6 or 7 years ago. The next table over was a 3-card poker table, dealt by the old Shufflemaster machines, you know, the ones that malfunctioned all the time, but didn't know which cards players had...

Anyway, this guy was playing by himself at this table. He was betting the max ($50) on the PP and Ante. He gets a straight flush, then the pit changed the cards after verifying the win. This took about 15 minutes. They get the new cards in (both decks), and about 20 minutes later he hits ANOTHER Straight flush! They verify the win, then change the cards again! What possible reason could they have for doing that, other than superstition. The guy was playing BY HIMSELF, it was SHUFFLER dealt, and you know surveillance was watching him the entire time.

perhaps the excessive card changing was just to get the player to leave the table,
not any superstition about the cards themselves, more one about the player...

It's common to verify the deck and change the cards after a jackpot. However, I've never seen this done on a sub-300 to 1 jackpot. Casino employees all the way up to the management level can be very superstitious; it mostly depends on the casino's culture. There are plenty of stories of casinos changing out "hot" dealers when a player is winning *facepalm*. At least it's becoming less common.